Tuscany in horseback

After university Jenny Bawtree went to teach English for a year in Florence and lost her return ticket. She continued teaching there for five years, ending up as a reader in the University of Florence, but then decided to change career and set up a riding centre in the Tuscan countryside with, in her own words, “no money, no experience and certainly no business sense”. One thing she had plenty of was luck, and she managed to create one of the best-known and best-loved trekking centres in the country. This is the story of her Tuscan adventure. A protagonist of the book is the ramshackle farmhouse she fell in love with and restored over the years: it is no longer ramshackle, but still an easy-going place where guests feel immediately at home. During the story we meet her parents, who came out to Italy to live near her, and her son Nicholas, who at the age of eight decided to become a journalist (he succeeded). We also meet Pietro, a peasant farmer who right from the beginning helped her to create the riding centre and became a lifelong friend; Sergio, his son, whose ability to build walls, lay down a terracotta floor, grow vegetables, shoe a horse, you name it, is legendary; Mario, who laced his riding lessons with choice swearwords; a hundred-year-old horseman; the lady with the di-ag-on-al pee; a lascivious maresciallo; a portly lady with an ‘aubergine’; and many others. This is the light-hearted story of a courageous woman and her love affair not only with horses, but also with the Tuscan countryside, Tuscan art and architecture and the Tuscan way of life.